Chapter 26: Dinner
Buffy, Dawn and Harry followed by Ron, Hermione and Ginny walked through a door leading into the basement kitchen.
Mr. Weasley and his eldest son, Bill, were talking quietly with their heads together at the end of the table. Mrs. Weasley cleared her throat. Mr, Weasley looked around and jumped to his feet.
"Ginny!" Mr. Weasley said, hurrying forward to greet his daughter and pulling her into a tight embrace. When he released Ginny, he turned and looked at Buffy, Dawn and Harry. "Harry, Buffy, Dawn!" he said as he shook each of their hands. "Good to see you!"
Bill hastily rolled up the lengths of parchment left on the table. "Journey all right?" Bill called, trying to gather up twelve scrolls at once. "Mad-Eye didn't make you all come via Greenland, then?"
"He tried," said Tonks, striding over to help Bill and immediately sending a candle toppling onto the last piece of parchment. "Oh no—sorry—"
"Here, dear," said Mrs. Weasley, sounding exasperated, and she repaired the parchment with a wave of her wand. "This sort of thing ought to be cleared away promptly at the end of meetings," she snapped before sweeping off toward an ancient dresser from which she started unloading dinner plates.
Bill took out his wand, muttered "Evanesco!" and the scrolls vanished.
"Sit down, Harry, Buffy, Dawn," said Sirius. "You all have met Mundungus, haven't you?" He motioned toward a pile of rags that gave a prolonged, grunting snore and then jerked awake.
"Some'n say m' name?" Mundungus mumbled sleepily. "I 'gree with Sirius…" He raised a very grubby hand in the air as though voting, his droopy, bloodshot eyes unfocused.
Ginny giggled.
"The meeting's over, Dung," said Sirius, as they all sat down around him at the table. "Harry, Buffy and Dawn have arrived."
"Eh?" said Mundungus, peering balefully at Harry through his matted ginger hair. "Blimey, so 'ey 'as. Yeah… you three all right?"
"Yeah," said Harry.
Mundungus fumbled nervously in his pockets and pulled out a grimy black pipe. He stuck it in his mouth, ignited the end of it with his wand, and took a deep pull on it. Great billowing clouds of greenish smoke obscured him in seconds.
"Owe you a 'pology," grunted a voice from the middle of the smelly cloud.
"For the last time, Mundungus," called Mrs. Weasley, "will you please not smoke that thing in the kitchen, especially not when we're about to eat!"
"Ah," said Mundungus. "Right. Sorry, Molly."
The cloud of smoke vanished as Mundungus stowed his pipe back in his pocket, but an acrid smell of burning socks lingered.
"And if you want dinner before midnight, I'll need a hand," Mrs. Weasley said to the room at large. "No, you can stay where you are, Harry, Buffy, Dawn, you three have had a long journey. You stay where you are also, Ginny—"
"What can I do, Molly?" said Tonks enthusiastically, bounding forward.
Mrs. Weasley hesitated, looking apprehensive. "Er—no, it's all right, Tonks, you have a rest too, you've done enough today—"
"No, no, I want to help!" said Tonks brightly, knocking over a chair as she hurried toward the dresser from which Hermione was collecting cutlery.
Soon a series of heavy knives were chopping meat and vegetables of their own accord, supervised by Mr. Weasley, while Mrs. Weasley stirred a cauldron dangling over the fire and the others took out plates, more goblets, and food from the pantry.
"Buffy, can you fill us in on what the meeting was about?" Dawn asked. "Beyond what you said upstairs about Willow."
Before Buffy could answer, Mrs. Weasley turned to face her twins when she saw they had bewitched a large cauldron of stew, an iron flagon of butterbeer, and a heavy wooden breadboard, complete with knife, to hurtle through the air toward them. "Fred—George—NO, JUST CARRY THEM!" she shrieked.
The stew skidded the length of the table and came to a halt just before the end, leaving a long black burn on the wooden surface, the flagon of butterbeer fell with a crash, spilling its contents everywhere, and the bread knife slipped off the board and landed, point down and quivering ominously, exactly where Sirius's right hand had been seconds before.
"FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE!" screamed Mrs. Weasley. "THERE WAS NO NEED—I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS—JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE ALLOWED TO USE MAGIC NOW YOU DON'T HAVE TO WHIP YOUR WANDS OUT FOR EVERY TINY LITTLE THING!"
"We were just trying to save a bit of time!" said Fred, hurrying forward and wrenching the bread knife out of the table. "Sorry Sirius, mate—didn't mean to—"
Buffy, Dawn, Harry and Sirius were laughing. Mundungus, who had toppled backward off his chair, was swearing as he got to his feet.
"Boys," Mr. Weasley said, lifting the stew back into the middle of the table, "your mother's right, you're supposed to show a sense of responsibility now you've come of age—"
"—none of your brothers caused this sort of trouble!" Mrs. Weasley raged at the twins, slamming a fresh flagon of butterbeer onto the table and spilling almost as much again. "Bill didn't feel the need to Apparate every few feet! Charlie didn't Charm everything he met! Percy—"
She stopped dead, catching her breath with a frightened look at her husband, whose expression was suddenly wooden.
"Let's eat," said Bill quickly.
"It looks wonderful, Molly," said Lupin, ladling stew onto a plate for her and handing it across the table.
For a few minutes there was silence but for the chink of plates and cutlery and the scraping of chairs as everyone settled down to their food.
Then Mrs. Weasley turned to Sirius and said, "I've been meaning to tell you, there's something trapped in that writing desk in the drawing room, it keeps rattling and shaking. Of course, it could just be a boggart, but I thought we ought to ask Alastor to have a look at it before we let it out."
"Ask, Buffy," said Sirius. "With everything restored to me after the trial. I turned over ownership on the house to Buffy."
Mrs. Weasley looked at Buffy.
"Whatever needs done, Molly," Buffy said.
Mrs. Weasley nodded. "The curtains in there are full of doxies too. I thought we might try and tackle them tomorrow."
Opposite Harry and Buffy, Tonks was entertaining Hermione, Dawn and Ginny by transforming her nose between mouthfuls. Screwing up her eyes each time, her nose swelled to a beaklike protuberance like Snape's, shrank to something resembling a button mushroom, and then sprouted a great deal of hair from each nostril. Apparently, this was a regular mealtime entertainment, because after a while Hermione started requesting her favorite noses.
"Do that one like a pig snout, Tonks…"
Tonks obliged.
Mr. Weasley, Bill, and Lupin were having an intense discussion about goblins.
"They're not giving anything away yet," said Bill. "I still can't work out whether they believe he's back or not. 'Course, they might prefer not to take sides at all. Keep out of it."
"I'm sure they'd never go over to You-Know-Who," said Mr. Weasley, shaking his head. "They've suffered losses too. Remember that goblin family he murdered last time, somewhere near Nottingham?"
"I think it depends what they're offered," said Lupin. "And I'm not talking about gold; if they're offered freedoms, we've been denying them for centuries, they're going to be tempted. Have you still not had any luck with Ragnok, Bill?"
"He's feeling pretty anti-wizard at the moment," said Bill. "He hasn't stopped raging about the Bagman business, he reckons the Ministry did a cover-up, those goblins never got their gold from him, you know—"
A gale of laughter from the middle of the table drowned the rest of Bill's words. Fred, George, Ron, and Mundungus were rolling around in their seats.
"…and then," choked Mundungus, tears running down his face, "and then, if you'll believe it, 'e says to me, 'e says, ''ere, Dung, where didja get all them toads from? 'Cos some son of a Bludger's gone and nicked all mine!' And I says, 'Nicked all your toads, Will, what next? So you'll be wanting some more, then?' And if you'll believe me, lads, the gormless gargoyle buys all 'is own toads back orf me for twice what 'e paid in the first place—"
"I don't think we need to hear any more of your business dealings, thank you very much, Mundungus," said Mrs. Weasley sharply, as Ron slumped forward onto the table, howling with laughter.
"Beg pardon, Molly," said Mundungus at once, wiping his eyes. "But, you know, Will nicked 'em orf Warty Harris in the first place so I wasn't really doing nothing wrong—"
"I don't know where you learned about right and wrong, Mundungus, but you seem to have missed a few crucial lessons," said Mrs. Weasley coldly.
Fred and George buried their faces in their goblets of butterbeer; George was hiccuping. For some reason, Mrs. Weasley threw a very nasty look at Sirius before getting to her feet and going to fetch a large rhubarb crumble for pudding.
"Molly doesn't approve of Mundungus," said Sirius in an undertone.
"How come he's in the Order?" Harry said very quietly.
"He's useful," Sirius muttered. "Knows all the crooks—well, he would, seeing as he's one himself. But he's also very loyal to Dumbledore, who helped him out of a tight spot once. It pays to have someone like Dung around, he hears things we don't. But Molly thinks inviting him to stay for dinner is going too far. She hasn't forgiven him for slipping off duty when he was supposed to be tailing you, Dawn."
"Dumbledore had someone following Dawn," Buffy said
"Dawn and Harry," Sirius admitted. "He told me when I went to let him know the plan. He figured with the fact the Hellmouth blocked scrying magic that I was good enough protection for you, Buffy. But Dawn and Harry each had someone tailing them."
Later after helpings of rhubarb crumble and custard there was finally a lull in the general conversation. Mr. Weasley was leaning back in his chair, looking replete and relaxed, Tonks was yawning widely, her nose now back to normal, and Ginny was resting her head on Dawn's shoulder.
"Nearly time for bed, I think," said Mrs. Weasley on a yawn.
"Not just yet, Molly," said Sirius, pushing away his empty plate and turning to look at Harry and Dawn. "I believe it's time Harry and Dawn have their questions answered."
The atmosphere in the room changed almost immediately. Where seconds before it had been sleepily relaxed, it was now alert, even tense.
"I agree, Molly," Buffy agreed. "Harry and Dawn both have a right to know. I learned that lesson the hard way." She looked at her sister or more importantly Dawn's arm. "When my sister cut herself thinking she wasn't real after learning about the Key." She looked back at Mrs. Weasley. "I realized after that that I can't do that anymore. I can't hide the truth from my family."
"I agree with Buffy," Sirius said. "After all they have been trapped in Sunnydale without word for a month. Buffy got some answers in the meeting but she, Dawn and Harry likely have many more. They have a right to know. And a right to ask their questions."
"Hang on!" interrupted George loudly.
"How come they get their questions answered?" said Fred angrily.
"We've been trying to get stuff out of you for a month and you haven't told us a single stinking thing!" said George.
"'You're too young, you're not in the Order,'" said Fred, in a high-pitched voice that sounded uncannily like his mother's. "Harry and Dawn are not even of age!"
"It's not my fault you haven't been told what the Order's doing," said Sirius calmly. "That's your parents' decision."
"Before you say anything, Molly," Buffy said. "It's my call, not yours, not Sirius. Dawn and Harry are in my care. And I think they have the right to know everything."
"Buffy, have you forgotten what Dumbledore said during the meeting?" Mrs. Weasley said.
"I have not and it's not his call," Buffy said. "And as I said in the meeting I don't like being manipulated. We tell Dawn and Harry or Dawn, Harry and I leave and head back to Sunnydale for the remainder of the summer."*-+
"Arthur!" said Mrs. Weasley, rounding on her husband. "Arthur, back me up!"
Mr. Weasley did not speak at once. He took off his glasses and cleaned them slowly on his robes, not looking at his wife. Only when he had replaced them carefully on his nose did he say, "Dumbledore knows the position has changed, Molly. He accepts that Dawn and Harry will have to be filled in just as Buffy was at least to a certain extent now that they are staying at headquarters—"
"Yes, but there's a difference between that and inviting them to ask whatever they like!"
"Personally," said Lupin quietly as Mrs. Weasley turned quickly to him, hopeful that finally she was about to get an ally, "I agree with Elizabeth to an extent—not all the facts, Molly, but the general picture—from us, rather than a garbled version from…others."
"Well," said Mrs. Weasley, breathing deeply and looking around the table for support that did not come, "well… I can see I'm going to be overruled. I'll just say this: Dumbledore must have had his reasons for not wanting Dawn and Harry to know too much, and speaking as someone who has got theirs and Buffy's best interests at heart—"
"They are not your children," said Sirius quietly.
"I know that," said Mrs. Weasley fiercely. "Harry and Dawn are in effect Buffy's since she has legal guardianship of them."
"Molly," Buffy said, "you are not the only one in this room that cares for myself, my brother or my sister." Mrs. Weasley's lower lip was trembling. "Your husband does, Sirius does, Ginny does. And Ginny has a bigger stake than you do, Molly. Because she's in love with Dawn and Dawn with her."
Dawn held up her hand to show Molly the claddagh ring that Ginny had given her.
"Very well," said Mrs. Weasley, her voice cracking. "Ginny—"
"Ginny stays," Buffy said.
"No, Buffy," Mrs. Weasley said.
"You know that Dawn will tell her everything," Buffy said. "The same goes for Ron and Hermione. I will recommend they keep their questions to themselves and can ask me in private later if they like as this is my family's business. But they will find out eventually anyways from their friends."
"Fine," Mrs. Weasley said bitterly. "Fred—George—I want you out of this kitchen, now."
"We're of age!" Fred and George bellowed together.
"NO!" shouted Mrs. Weasley.
"Molly, you can't stop Fred and George," said Mr. Weasley wearily. "They are of age—"
"They're still at school—"
"But they're legally adults now," said Mr. Weasley in the same tired voice.
Mrs. Weasley was now scarlet in the face. "I—oh, all right then, Fred and George can stay as well."
"Okay, where shall we start?" Sirius asked.
Harry looked at Dawn and then at Buffy before looking back at Sirius. "Where's Voldemort? What's he doing? Buffy, Dawn and I've been trying to watch the Muggle news," he said, ignoring the shudders and winces at the name, "and there hasn't been anything that looks like him yet, no funny deaths or anything—"
"That's because there haven't been any suspicious deaths yet," said Lupin, "not as far as we know, anyway… And we know quite a lot. More than he thinks we do anyway,"
"This is a question I had in the meeting," Buffy said, "that was not answered. Someone be kind and tell me why he hasn't killed anyone since I saw him be resurrected."
"Buffy, he doesn't want to draw attention to himself at the moment," said Sirius. "It would be dangerous for him. His comeback didn't come off quite the way he wanted it to, you see. He messed it up."
"Or rather, you messed it up for him," said Lupin with a satisfied smile.
"How?" Harry asked perplexedly.
"Buffy wasn't supposed to survive!" said Sirius. "Nobody apart from his Death Eaters was supposed to know he'd come back. But Buffy survived to bear witness. And the very last person he wanted alerted to his return the moment he got back was Dumbledore. And who does Buffy tell first when she gets back.
"Technically me and Harry," Dawn said. "But Dumbledore and you also, Sirius."
"Exactly," Sirius said.
"How has that helped?" Harry asked.
"Are you kidding?" said Bill incredulously. "Dumbledore was the only one You-Know-Who was ever scared of!"
"Thanks to you, Buffy, Dumbledore was able to recall the Order of the Phoenix about an hour after Voldemort returned," said Sirius.
"That's what he sent you off to do," Buffy said. "When you originally were going to come straight to Sunnydale with us."
"Yes," Sirius said.
"So, what's the Order been doing?" said Harry, looking around at them all.
"Working as hard as we can to make sure Voldemort can't carry out his plans," said Lupin.
"How do we know what his plans are?" Dawn asked.
"Dumbledore's got a shrewd idea," said Lupin, "and Dumbledore's shrewd ideas normally turn out to be accurate."
"So, what does Dumbledore reckon he's planning?" Harry asked.
"Well, firstly, he'll want to build up his army again," said Sirius. "In the old days he had huge numbers at his command; witches and wizards he'd bullied or bewitched into following him, his faithful Death Eaters, a great variety of Dark creatures."
"You heard him planning to recruit the giants; well, they'll be just one group he's after," Lupin added. "He's certainly not going to try and take on the Ministry of Magic with only a dozen Death Eaters."
"Before you ask," Buffy said as she looked at her siblings. "They are trying to hinder his recruitment drive as much as possible by letting people know he's returned and put them on guard."
"It's proving tricky, though," said Bill.
"Why?" Harry asked.
"Because of the Ministry's attitude," said Tonks. "Cornelius Fudge dismissed the fact You-Know-Who came back. He's absolutely refusing to believe it's happened."
"But why?" said Harry. "Why's he being so stupid? If Dumbledore—"
"That there lies the problem," Buffy said.
"Fudge is frightened of what Dumbledore's up to," said Mr. Weasley. "You see, Fudge thinks Dumbledore's plotting to overthrow him. He thinks Dumbledore wants to be Minister of Magic."
"But Dumbledore doesn't want—" Dawn said.
"Of course, he doesn't," said Mr. Weasley. "He's never wanted the Minister's job, even though a lot of people wanted him to take it when Millicent Bagnold retired. Fudge came to power instead, but he's never quite forgotten how much popular support Dumbledore had, even though Dumbledore never applied for the job."
"Deep down, Fudge knows Dumbledore's much cleverer than he is, a much more powerful wizard, and in the early days of his Ministry he was forever asking Dumbledore for help and advice," said Lupin. "But it seems that he's become fond of power now, and much more confident. He loves being Minister of Magic, and he's managed to convince himself that he's the clever one and Dumbledore's simply stirring up trouble for the sake of it."
"How can he think that?" said Harry angrily. "Buffy even saw Voldemort. Surely he doesn't dismiss the word of a Slayer?"
"Because accepting that Voldemort's back would mean trouble like the Ministry hasn't had to cope with for nearly fourteen years," said Sirius bitterly. "Fudge just can't bring himself to face it. It's so much more comfortable to convince himself Dumbledore's lying to destabilize him."
"You see the problem," said Lupin. "While the Ministry insists there is nothing to fear from Voldemort, it's hard to convince people he's back, especially as they really don't want to believe it in the first place. What's more, the Ministry's leaning heavily on the Daily Prophet not to report any of what they're calling Dumbledore's rumormongering, so most of the Wizarding community are completely unaware anything's happened, and that makes them easy targets for the Death Eaters if they're using the Imperius Curse."
"Then there is the problem of what the Daily Prophet is writing about us, or me in particular," Buffy said.
"Hermione and Ron told us about what the Daily Prophet was doing," Dawn said.
"Then there is the fact that Lupin is a werewolf, which apparently in the wizarding world is frowned upon," Buffy said. "And you remember I kept hitting roadblocks when I started trying to get Sirius his trial. I'm fairly sure Fudge was blocking the attempts. I had my supporters though thankfully who added their votes to mine and got him his trial."
"Tonks and Arthur would lose their jobs at the Ministry if they started shooting their mouths off," said Sirius, "and it's very important for us to have spies inside the Ministry, because you can bet Voldemort will have them."
"We've managed to convince a couple of people, though," said Mr. Weasley. "Tonks here, for one—she's too young to have been in the Order of the Phoenix last time, and having Aurors on our side is a huge advantage—Kingsley Shacklebolt's been a real asset."
"But if none of you's putting the news out that Voldemort's back—" Harry began.
"Who said none of us was putting the news out?" said Sirius. "Why d'you think Dumbledore's in such trouble?"
"What d'you mean?" Dawn asked.
"They're trying to discredit him," said Lupin. "Didn't you see the Daily Prophet last week?"
"We don't get it," Buffy said. "I had Harry cancel his subscription after they started printing their lies about us."
"Probably a good thing," Lupin admitted. "They reported that he'd been voted out of the Chairmanship of the International Confederation of Wizards because he's getting old and losing his grip, but it's not true, he was voted out by Ministry wizards after he made a speech announcing Voldemort's return. They've demoted him from Chief Warlock on the Wizengamot and they're talking about taking away his Order of Merlin, First Class, too."
"I wondered why I didn't see him at Sirius trial," Buffy said. "I should have been notified about the vote to remove Albus."
"You were the one that said Voldemort had returned," Lupin said. "They very likely didn't want your vote since you would side with Dumbledore. They could easily say that because of the time it takes an owl to cross the Atlantic that you got the owl too late to arrive in time for the vote."
"Dumbledore says he doesn't care what they do as long as they don't take him off the Chocolate Frog cards," said Bill, grinning.
"It's no laughing matter," said Mr. Weasley shortly. "If he carries on defying the Ministry like this, he could end up in Azkaban and the last thing we want is Dumbledore locked up. While You-Know-Who knows Dumbledore's out there and wise to what he's up to, he's going to go cautiously for a while. If Dumbledore's out of the way—well, You-Know-Who will have a clear field."
"And before either of you ask," Buffy said. "Voldemort is not going door to door. He'll do like Crouch did to Krum last year and he or his followers will use the Imperius curse to bring people over to his side."
"Or he'll trick them or black mail them," added Sirius. "He's well practiced at operating in secrecy. In any case, gathering followers is only one thing he's interested in, he's got other plans too, plans he can put into operation very quietly indeed, and he's concentrating on them at the moment."
"Such as killing us," Buffy said as Harry and Dawn looked at her. "Since I got away, he very likely now wants revenge on me for sure. Dawn, we're not sure if he knows you exist or not, we suspect he might since he saw how I escaped and he would want to find out how the portal was opened. If he does know about you, he may want to turn you or outright kill you so you can't pose a threat to him. And he definitely wants you dead, Harry, simply because of what you symbolize. Hope, after all you are the only person to survive a killing curse."
"For which we believe he could be looking for a weapon," Mr. Weasley said. "Something he didn't have last time."
"Like what kind of weapon?" said Harry. "Something worse than the Avada Kedavra—?"
"That's enough." Mrs. Weasley said.
"Molly," Buffy said. "I know you want to protect us. But keeping Harry and Dawn in the dark will lead to no good."
"Buffy's right," Dawn agreed. "Or did you forget what Buffy reminded you of earlier before we started talking about all of this? You know what happened when I found out I was the Key."
Mrs. Weasley sighed as she looked at Dawn. "I have not forgotten," she said quietly as tear fell down her cheek.